


Halfway House

by tridecaphilia



Series: Cranks Anonymous [2]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Crank Newt, Depressed Newt, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Newt Lives, Sick Newt, read rehab first or this won't make sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5116118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tridecaphilia/pseuds/tridecaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I take it this is my new cell," Newt said. </p><p>"Safe room," Minho corrected. </p><p>Newt snorted. "What's the difference?"</p><p>"The cell was meant to keep people safe from you," Minho said. "This is meant to keep you safe from yourself."</p><p>"Fine," Newt amended. "Padded cell."</p><p>They might have brought Newt home, but there are still problems to be solved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look who's back with the promised sequel! This is planned to update every Saturday until it's done.
> 
> Edit: GDI self. I forgot to mark the "this has multiple chapters" ticky box. Ten chapters, just like Rehab.

Despite their bundling him into a coat, Newt was shivering by the time they reached their new home.

“You’re still too skinny, shank,” Minho grumbled, and despite Newt’s protests he wrapped an arm around the blonde, pulling him close. “Thomas, let’s get him inside and get the fire up.”

Thomas nodded, opening the door for them. Minho guided Newt in, giving him more support than he really needed. It was an excuse to touch and hold, and given that Newt had tried to kill himself again just a few months ago, Minho would take any excuse he could get.

They stayed there, in the entryway, while Thomas stoked the fire. The house, like all the others in paradise, had neither electricity nor central heating. Gally was working with some of WICKED's finest on it, but for the moment fires were the only way to heat a house. Fire safety and maintenance had become priorities of late.

“Cold in here,” Newt muttered, rubbing his arms.

Minho took over the job. It was another excuse to touch and hold him after months of being separated by glass or watched by guards and doctors. And Newt seemed to slowly relax under the attention.

“Yeah,” he agreed with the assessment. “Gally and his team couldn’t figure out how to get electricity and heat and plumbing in time for winter. Him and the scientists are working on it, they’re going to start installing it in a few months. The communal cabins are higher priority, though.” Most of the Gladers still lived together, and the Glenners in another cabin. They’d been moved up in priority for getting their own cabin because of Newt’s particular needs, but they were at the bottom of the list for heating and plumbing because it was only the three of them. “Sorry,” Minho added.

Newt offered him a tired smile. “Is it too late to go back to my cell?” he asked. “That at least had a toilet.”

Minho snorted. “Yeah, shank, it is. Thomas, how’s the fire coming?”

“It’s up, it’s up,” Thomas said. “I’m just going to get the one in the bedroom. Why don’t you show Newt around, get him moving?”

“Right,” Minho said, nodding. He turned to wrap his arm around Newt’s shoulders. “Come on.”

There wasn't much to show him. There was something kind of like a kitchen, or rather a room that would be a kitchen when they finally got power, which currently contained only an icebox with real ice and a wood-fired stove. It was the only fire in the house that wasn't currently lit, them not needing the kitchen yet. There was a main room, furnished mostly in pillows and cushions the Brickniks had made when the Builders started working on the cabins. There was a bedroom with one of the only substantial pieces of furniture in the house, in the form of a massive bed. And then there was--

"I take it this is my new cell," Newt said.

"Safe room," Minho corrected.

Newt snorted. "What's the difference?"

"The cell was meant to keep people safe from you," Minho said. "This is meant to keep you safe from yourself."

"Fine," Newt amended. " _Padded_ cell."

Minho frowned but didn't object to the term. The “cell” was indeed padded, with a cushioned floor and walls. The cot had had all its sharp edges sanded down and covered with cushions. The door had a window in it so they could check on him or deliver food if things got really bad.

Newt stared at the cot with a look of almost longing on his face. "Should just put me in there now and have done with it," he said. "This isn't going to work."

"Why not?" asked Thomas, coming up behind them. He wrapped his arms around Newt's waist.

Newt shrugged even as he leaned into Thomas. "'M not good with people who aren't you," he muttered. "They annoy me."

Minho kissed his temple. "We know," he said. "One of us will stay with you until you're ready to be on your own."

"Baby steps," Thomas agreed, kissing Newt's neck. "I'll be here all day tomorrow. You won't have to be alone."

Newt sighed. "You'd be better off if you'd just give up on me."

Minho shook his head. "Not a chance in hell."

Newt muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “I was afraid of that.”

“Hey.” Thomas kissed his neck again. “It’ll be okay. We’ll make sure it’s okay.”

Newt didn’t answer.

Thomas sighed. “Dinner,” he said. “Dinner, and bed.”

Minho nodded. “Come on,” he said, winding an arm around Newt’s waist again. “We got dinner from Fry earlier, it’s in the ice box. We’ll heat it up and eat and go to bed.”

Heating up dinner was of course something of a chore when it could only be done on the stove that still had to be lit and heat up, but it gave them time to relax a bit and let Newt explore the house. And he did, after sufficient prodding and probably only to make them leave him alone about it. Minho sighed, looking at Thomas once Newt was out of the room.

“You sure you’ll be okay with him tomorrow?” he asked softly. “I can stay home--”

Thomas shook his head. “We’ll be fine,” he said with more confidence than Minho thought he probably really felt. “You go to work, we’ll see you at dinner.”

Minho nodded reluctantly. “Wonder where our boy got off to.”

“Want to track him down?”

“A little.” He smiled ruefully. “Is that paranoid?”

“A little,” Thomas teased, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Let’s go find him.”

Newt wasn’t that hard to find. He’d made it only as far as the living room before building a nest of cushions and blankets and falling asleep.

Minho couldn’t help smiling. “Almost forget everything that’s happened, when he looks like that,” he said softly.

Thomas nodded. “You want to wake him up?”

“Food’s not even ready yet,” Minho said, untangling his arm from Thomas’s waist. “Let him sleep.”

While Thomas went to stir the meal, Minho carefully picked his way through the cushions on the floor until he could curl up in Newt’s nest. He cupped his cheek in his hand, rubbing soft circles with his thumb. Finally, with Newt asleep, he said what he’d been thinking since they’d learned Newt was throwing up.

“Don’t scare us like that again,” he whispered. “We need you, okay? We’ve always needed you. Don’t you dare.”

Newt stirred in his sleep, forehead creasing. Minho curled an arm around him and pulled him close, and the blond settled down.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispered against Newt’s hair. “Twice, I thought I lost you. Don’t do that to me again.”

Thomas knocked on the doorframe. “Dinner’s ready,” he said softly. “You want to wake him up?”

“It’ll keep,” Minho said. “Come here and lie down.”

Thomas smiled and huffed a laugh. “Okay,” he said, and picked his way through the cushions until he could lie down on Newt’s other side.

They’d done this for two months when Newt was in the cell, but there was something different about it here. Maybe it was that the house was colder, despite the fires and the blankets. Maybe it was the cushions. Maybe it was just that it was theirs.

“We’ll have to wake him up eventually,” Thomas pointed out. “He’s still too skinny, he shouldn’t be skipping meals.”

“I know,” Minho whispered back. “But not yet, okay?”

Thomas nodded. “Not yet.”

 


	2. I shot a hole through everything I loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So guess who forgot to hit the ticky box saying this is a multi-chapter work? Yep, I totally did that. Anyway. As before, we've got ten chapters planned.

Watching out for Newt was a lot harder than Thomas had anticipated. Not that he'd expected it to be easy by any means, but Newt wasn't the most helpful at it.

It wasn’t Newt’s fault, he knew that. Newt was struggling with a disease that he could never truly recover from. No matter how many pills the doctors prescribed, no matter how many coping skills Newt developed, the smallest member of their triad would always be, at least in part, a Crank.

Still. That didn’t make it any easier, especially when the behaviors that were so frustrating Thomas had nothing to do with the Flare.

“Newt!” he called. “Come on, come out, we have to go!”

No answer. Just as there hadn’t been an answer the last five times. If the doors weren’t all carefully locked from the inside, Thomas would have thought Newt had snuck out.

“Newt,” he sighed. “What are you doing? Where are you?”

No answer. Time for drastic measures.

“Newt, you’re scaring me.”

The door to the safe room clicked open. “You don’t have to be afraid,” muttered the familiar accented voice.

Thomas sighed, turning to his boyfriend and holding out his arms for Newt to walk into. “You’ve only been home a day and you’re disappearing on me. Of course I got scared.”

Newt took the invitation, not a little reluctance written over his face, and went into Thomas’s arms. Thomas held him close, stroking his hair.

“It’s not a good idea,” Newt muttered. “Why do I have to go out anyway?”

“Because you stink,” Thomas said fondly. “So do I. We need showers, and this is the best time to take them, while everyone else is at work.”

Newt looked away. “Why can’t we just wait until we get plumbing?”

“Because that won’t be until after the winter. Newt, come on, it’ll be _fine_.”

No answer, but at least this time the blond was safe in Thomas’s arms. He didn’t have to worry that he’d done something drastic.

“Newt, look at me.” Thomas waited until the boy met his eyes before he asked, “Do you trust me?”

Newt smiled crookedly. “‘Course I trust you, Tommy. I just don’t trust myself.”

Thomas wrapped an arm around Newt’s shoulders. “You don’t have to. I’ll protect everyone from you.”

Newt huffed a laugh, but he didn’t fight when Thomas led him out the door.

~

Newt refused to let Thomas help him shower. Thomas had more or less expected that, but he couldn't pretend he wasn't worried being kept away. He wanted to know for sure that Newt hadn't slipped back into old habits, wasn't hurting himself or throwing up when they weren't looking. He hoped that wasn't why Newt had refused help, hoped the half-Crank had just wanted to do it for himself.

Newt took a while showering, so long Thomas started to worry and almost went in. He stopped himself in time, thankfully. Newt wouldn’t take kindly to being treated as an invalid. So he leaned against the wall by the showers, waiting for Newt to come back.

After about twenty minutes, the water turned off and the blond emerged from the showers, a towel wrapped around him. He shivered as he hit the air of the bathrooms, outside the warm steam of the shower.

Thomas moved automatically, putting a gentle hand between Newt’s shoulder blades. “You’re okay,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”

Newt shook his head. “Need to brush my teeth,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Thomas agreed. He picked up Newt’s dirty clothes, wrapped the coat around the blond’s shoulders. Their cabin wasn’t too far from the bathrooms, they could get Newt dry and into clean clothes once they got back.

It was lunch break for most of the residents, so there were a few more people in the bathroom than there had been when they’d gotten there. Thomas didn’t think much of it until he heard the first whisper.

He couldn’t make out the words, but he saw Newt’s shoulders tense and his hands tighten on his toothbrush. The blond’s hearing was apparently better than Thomas’s.

Thomas stepped up, putting his hands on Newt’s shoulders, thumbs rubbing small circles. “You’re okay,” he said quietly. “Remember who you are.”

Newt didn’t relax, but he went back to brushing his teeth, rinsed out his mind, and dried off. Thomas was starting to think they’d get home without incident, people or no people.

“Look,” someone stage-whispered behind them. “It’s the WICKED scum and his pet Crank.”

Thomas didn’t have a chance to react. Newt seized the nearest object that wasn’t nailed down--a bar of soap--turned, and hurled it at the speaker. It sailed within inches of his face and slammed into the wall.

“Newt!” Thomas yelled, grabbing the blond around the waist as he tried to hurl himself at the man. “Newt, calm down!”

He heard shrieks and running footsteps, but didn’t pay attention. Newt thrashed in his arms, elbow hitting Thomas’s eye, foot slamming into his ankle.

“Newt!” Thomas yelled again, half in pain. He shifted, grabbing Newt’s wrist and shoulder, kicking his leg out from under him, driving him to the ground as gently as he could. He twisted Newt’s arm up behind him, until his wrist was pinned between his shoulder blades.

“Crank!” someone yelled. “You shouldn’t be here! You should be put down!”

It was the same speaker as before. Thomas looked up, glaring daggers. “Get out!” he yelled.

The man ignored him. “Crank!”

Thomas wished for something to throw himself. “Get out, or I swear I will break your legs and _drag_ you!”

The man looked ready to spit another insult, but something in Thomas’s gaze apparently gave him a better idea. He left.

Newt, however, didn’t seem to care. He kept thrashing, screaming at the top of his lungs, fighting Thomas’s grip until something gave way with a sickening sound.

Thomas’s eyes went wide. Newt screamed again, this time an inhuman wail of pain. And suddenly the blond went still, heaving in breaths, whimpering and sobbing quietly.

“Shuck,” Thomas hissed, letting go of Newt’s arm hurriedly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Newt, I’m so sorry.”

Newt didn’t move, didn’t say anything. His shoulder looked deformed, and when he twitched it to the side it flopped loosely.

“Shuck,” Thomas whispered again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s--let’s get you home, I’ll bring Jeff, you’ll be okay.”

Carefully, with a lot of pleading and apologies, Thomas got Newt to his feet. He wrapped his arm around the blond’s waist and held his injured arm still carefully as they made their way home.

Thomas felt awful about putting Newt in the safe room when he was injured, but he had to. He couldn’t risk another outburst. And Newt wasn’t complaining. He lay down on his side, good arm holding the bad one protectively, and lay there crying quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispered, and locked the door and hurried to the hospital.

“Jeff!” he yelled. “Need you!”

Jeff looked up from where he was working on Teresa. “What’s going on?”

“Newt--” Thomas began, then fumbled. “He lashed out, I had to pin him, he fought, he--his arm’s hurt, I don’t know if it’s broken or dislocated--”

Jeff cut him off. “Well, what’s it look like? Is it bending anywhere it shouldn’t be?”

Thomas shook his head. “Just--his shoulder looks--it looks _deformed_ ,” he said helplessly. "It's all--floppy, he can move it but it doesn't move right..."

“Sounds dislocated,” Jeff said, fishing through their icebox. He came out with a bag of ice, thrust it at Thomas, and grabbed a length of bandage. “Let’s go.”

Newt hadn’t moved, hadn’t even taken off his coat. He was shivering--it was cold in the safe room and he was still damp from his shower.

“Newt,” Thomas whispered, dropping to his knees by the blond. “Newt, baby, I’m here. I brought Jeff, he’s gonna fix you up, okay?”

Newt opened his eyes, which were red from crying, and looked up at Thomas. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” Thomas whispered. “Come on, sit up for me?”

Newt pulled himself up to sitting, letting Jeff examine his shoulder.

“Good news,” the Med-Jack said. “It’s definitely a dislocation. Fair warning--this is gonna suck.”

He didn’t count, just pushed hard on Newt’s arm. Newt screamed as his arm popped back into place. His breathing went ragged, quiet whimpers escaping him.

“I know,” Jeff said. “Come on, you broke half the bones in your body once, you can handle a little dislocation.” He put the bag of ice on Newt’s shoulder and wrapped the bandage around it to tie it in place. “Keep this on for about fifteen minutes, then take it off for about fifteen minutes. Repeat until all the ice melts.”

He wanted for Newt to nod, then stood up. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow,” he promised.

Newt whispered something. Jeff frowned. “What was that?”

Newt lifted his head. His eyes were still red. “Get out,” he repeated quietly.

“Already gone,” Jeff said, not taking offense. “Not for nothing, but if you’re going Crank I’m going anywhere else. I’ve seen what you can do.”

He left without another word, just a salute to the two of them.

Newt turned to Thomas. “Get out,” he repeated. “Leave.”

Thomas felt like he’d been slapped. He hadn’t expected Newt to push him away, but maybe he should have. This was his fault.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and retreated to the door. “I’ll bring you fresh clothes,” he added.

“Lock the door,” Newt said by way of answer.

Thomas obeyed.

His stomach was weighed down with rocks. He’d nearly broken his boyfriend’s arm. The pin was supposed to hold him still, was supposed to threaten Newt with pain such that he stopped fighting. It hadn’t worked, and it was his fault for stopping to tell the guy to leave, for taking his attention off Newt for even a second, for not just picking him up and taking him home like Minho would have done.

He picked out new clothes for Newt on autopilot, reaching for whatever looked warm and cozy. Bad enough he was locked in the safe room, bad enough that Thomas had injured his arm--Thomas wouldn’t let him be cold on top of everything.

“Newt?” he said quietly, opening the door. “I brought you new clothes.”

The blond didn’t move, just stayed where he was on the floor. Thomas went in just long enough to set the clothes down, then retreated to the hallway again.

“Newt?” he asked through the door. “Will you get dressed for me, please?”

He watched through the window as Newt slowly, robotically, sat up, dried off, and pulled on the clothes. He had to take off the ice from his shoulder to get his shirt on, but he tied it back on when he was dressed, and curled up in his little ball again.

“I’m so sorry,” Thomas whispered. “Please let me in. I won’t do it again.” He’d find some other way to restrain Newt next time. No more pins that threatened to break something if Newt didn’t calm down fast enough.

Newt was quiet for so long Thomas thought he’d refuse to answer. Then he whispered. “I can’t.”

It broke Thomas’s heart to hear that. “Because I hurt you?”

“Because I’ll hurt you.”

Thomas’s eyes widened. “No. No, Newt, you won’t hurt me. I promise you won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t _know_ that!”

“Yes, I do, Newt. I know. I promise you won’t hurt me.”

“You can’t know that,” Newt whispered. “I don’t know that.”

“But I do,” Thomas said. “Because you’re afraid you will. Cranks aren’t afraid of violence, Newt, they crave it. You’re not thinking like a Crank. You won’t hurt me.”

Silence.

“Let me come in?” Thomas asked. “Let me hold you? Please?”

More silence. Finally, through the window, Thomas saw Newt nod.

Relieved, he opened the door and went inside. He sat down by Newt and pulled him into a tight hug.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

All of a sudden, Newt started to cry. He buried his face in Thomas’s shoulder, shaking, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry,” Thomas whispered, petting his hair, kissing his head. “I’m sorry. We’ll figure something else out. I won’t do that to you again. I’m so sorry. I’ve got you.”

Newt was saying something. It took several repetitions for Thomas to figure out what it was. “I’m sorry,” the blond was whispering. “I’m so sorry…”

“It’s not your fault, Newt,” Thomas said. “It’s mine. You don’t have to apologize.”

He should have cleared the room before letting Newt in. He should have dealt with the whispers instead of trying to contain Newt’s rage. He should have brought Newt home instead of letting him stay and brush his teeth. This outburst wasn’t Newt’s fault. It was Thomas’s. It was all his fault.

“Count for me?” Thomas asked quietly.

Newt sighed but nodded.

Thomas took each of the blond’s fingers as Newt whispered the number. As he did, the tension bled out of him.

Thomas should have done this sooner. This was his job. Getting Newt to focus on the human parts of him instead of the Crank part. Getting him to relax, helping him deal with reality. He’d given up working anywhere else so he could devote himself to Newt’s care, and he’d failed.

Around fifteen, Newt’s voice trailed off, and Thomas realized Newt was asleep.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered one more time, and kissed his head. “I’ll do better tomorrow.”


	3. You can count on me like one two three and I'll be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about waiting until this afternoon to post this, but I actually really enjoyed writing this chapter. Hopefully you enjoy reading it just as much. This is a chapter I've been waiting to write since I started writing Rehab.
> 
> Also, the plan for this has changed a little bit, but it's a change I think you'll all enjoy.

“I almost broke his arm.” Thomas still had to fight to get the words out, to admit what had happened, even when the person he was telling couldn’t respond. “I used one of the bars the guards taught me but--it subdues him with pain, with the threat of injury, but he didn’t care about it and he fought and--and I dislocated his shoulder. I could’ve broken his arm.”

Teresa didn’t speak. Her head had turned to the side a little bit, mouth open, and drool was leaking out onto the pillow. Thomas pushed her head to face up again, wiping the drool away with a corner of the sheet.

“God, I wish you could talk to me,” he said. “I need someone to help right now.”

He’d told Minho, who had called Newt an idiot and then hugged him fiercely and checked over his shoulder to be sure he was okay. He hadn't seemed to blame Thomas at all. Newt didn't either. Only Thomas realized it was his fault.

Teresa mumbled something, head lolling to the side again.

Thomas's heart almost stopped. “Teresa?” Was she awake? After all this time, was she waking up?

No response. Nothing. But Thomas knew what he saw. She'd moved.

“Jeff!” he yelled. “Jeff! She moved!”

The Med-Jack had been down the room tending another patient, but he came over when he heard Thomas's yell. “What happened?”

Thomas couldn't take his eyes off her. “She--she mumbled something, and turned her head.”

Jeff nodded slowly. “She open her eyes?”

Thomas shook his head. “No. Should she have?”

“Nah. Well, I mean, yes, if she was waking up.”

“So?” Thomas pressed. “What does it mean?”

Jeff pinched the bridge of his nose. “Doesn't mean much, sorry to tell you. She's done that a couple times the past few days. Might mean she's coming to, but all it really tells us is that her brain's still working.”

Thomas wanted to punch the resigned expression off the Med-Jack’s face. “Well that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

Jeff sighed. “You don’t get it. There’s a lot you don’t get--and you don’t need to. Even I don’t know everything. But--moving and mumbling means she’s a step above a coma, but there’s a lot in between coma and consciousness.”

“She came out of the last one in five minutes,” Thomas said.

“First off,” Jeff held up a finger, “she was always talking in that one, so she wasn’t fully comatose to begin with. And second, it was induced by the Swipe. That makes a big difference, because it made it a lot more predictable. WICKED controlled if and when she woke up. This time, there’s nothing keeping her from staying like this forever.”

Thomas refused to listen, refused to hear this. “She won’t be like this forever. She’s strong. She’ll come out of it.”

Jeff didn’t answer.

Thomas balled his hands into fists, but refrained from actually punching the other boy. “That’s a load of klunk,” he spat. “She _will_ wake up.”

He stormed out of the hospital, leaving the Med-Jack behind.

~

Something was wrong.

Minho had taken the day off to take care of Newt, but when Thomas entered the house he didn't see either of them.

“Minho?” he called. He glanced in the living room, thinking maybe they'd made a pillow nest again, but no one was there. “Newt?”

No answer. His heart was starting to pound. Where were they?

He checked the bedroom. No Minho, no Newt. The kitchen--empty. In desperation, he checked the safe room, but that was empty too.

“Minho?” he yelled, starting to panic. “Newt, where are you?”

He almost played that card again-- _you're scaring me--_ but it seemed unfair, even if it was true. Besides, Minho was unlikely to react. And what if they weren't here?

What if a Munie had attacked Newt? Thomas thought. What if Newt had fought? What if--

The front door opened. He spun around to see Minho and Newt coming in.

“You're okay,” he whispered. He seized them both and pulled them into a tight hug, kissing each of them firmly. “You scared me. Where were you?”

Minho lifted a metal lunch pail. “Getting some grub,” he said. “Thought you were with Teresa.”

Thomas's heart sank. How could he admit he'd stormed out of his job?

Newt got what he wasn't saying, of course. “I'm the Crank here, Tommy. Sit down and eat and then go apologize and finish your shift.”

Thomas blushed, embarrassed, but obeyed the demand. “You're not a Crank anymore,” he said. “Maybe half a Crank.”

“That's still half a Crank more than you,” Newt retorted. “So what's your bloody excuse, then?”

Thomas sighed. “Teresa might wake up,” he mumbled, grabbing one of the rolls Minho unpacked.

Newt raised an eyebrow. “Did the Flare damage my hearing? Because that sounds like good news, not something to storm out over.”

Minho poked his shoulder. “Eat,” he ordered, handing him a plate piled high with pot roast and vegetables. “You're still too skinny.”

“I've gained five pounds since we moved in,” Newt complained. “How skinny can I be?”

“You were skinny in the Glade,” Minho retorted. “But it was warm there. You need body fat to keep warm here.” Newt muttered something uncomplimentary but started eating. Minho turned back to Thomas. “Seriously, why'd that make you leave?”

Thomas sighed. “She might not,” he said. “She's been mumbling and it should be good news but Jeff says she might still never wake up.”

“Yeah,” Minho said flatly. “So?”

Thomas stared at him. “She might _die_ like this,” he said.

“Tommy,” Newt said, “it was a miracle she survived in the first place. Asking her to be totally okay after being crushed by a ceiling is a little much.”

“She’s barely alive,” Thomas said. “And I thought--I thought when she started moving and mumbling she’d wake up but…”

He trailed off. Newt sighed and nudged him with his elbow.

“Stupid reason to leave,” he said. “Stupid time to leave. You’re keeping her healthy so her body works if she wakes up, now that she might be waking up you up and left?”

Put that way, Thomas could see his point.

“Right,” he muttered, shoving the last of his meal in his mouth. “I’ll be back tonight.”

~

He was stretching her arm, bending it back and forth so it would maintain mobility, when it happened again. She turned her head toward him, mumbling something. Only this time, he caught a flash of blue under her eyelids before the moment passed.

“Jeff!” he yelled. “Jeff, she opened her eyes!”

He crouched beside her, taking her face in his hands. “Teresa,” he whispered. “Teresa, are you awake? Can you hear me?”

She didn’t open her eyes. But she mumbled something. Something he was very sure was “Tom?”

His heart almost stopped. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Thomas. It’s Tom. Teresa, wake up, please wake up. Please look at me.”

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, her eyes opened. For the briefest of seconds they focused on him. Then she blinked once--and then her eyes closed again.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, shaking her shoulders. “Don’t check out on me. Don’t do this. Come on, Teresa, look at me. Talk to me.”

“Step aside,” a half-familiar voice ordered. Marie. Thomas stepped back and Marie went to work, checking Teresa’s pulse and the various machines attached to her.

“She woke up,” Thomas said stupidly. “She looked at me.”

“She’s not awake now,” Marie said. “Stay with her, yell for me if it happens again.”

“I will,” Thomas promised.

But it didn’t. Nothing changed for the rest of the day. He kept exercising Teresa’s limbs, praying she’d look at him, praying she’d wake up, say something, do something. But she stayed there, as still and quiet as if it had never happened.

At six o’clock, he gave up. He was supposed to head home an hour ago. He couldn’t stay by her bedside all night. He had to get home to Minho and Newt. He turned and headed for the door.

“Tom?”

His heart did stop that time, and it took a couple seconds for it to start up again. He turned around slowly, not wanting it to be a dream, not wanting to see those eyes closed again. But they weren’t. Her eyes, those brilliant blue eyes, were open again and looking at him.

“Tom?” she repeated.

His brain kicked into gear. “Marie!” he yelled, running toward her. “Jeff, Clint! She’s awake!”

He collapsed into the chair beside her bed, pulling her into a hug. “You scared me,” he whispered. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

“Tom--ow,” she mumbled.

He pulled back instantly, ashamed. She’d been crushed nearly to death just a few months ago, comatose since then. “You’re awake,” he whispered, stroking her hair back from her face as the sound of running feet announced the arrival of the Med-Jacks. “You’re awake, oh my God, I can’t believe it. You’re _awake_.”

The next few minutes were a blur. Both Med-Jacks and Marie had shown up, and all three of them crowded around, checking Teresa’s vitals and firing questions at her. She hesitated before every answer, even her own name, but she answered.

After a few minutes, Thomas realized he wasn’t needed. He didn’t know how to handle this. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he promised her, though he wasn’t sure she could hear him over the beeping of the machines and the questions of the Med-Jacks. “I’ll come back.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and ran for home.

“Minho!” he yelled when the house came in sight. “Newt! She’s awake! She’s _awake!_ ”

He burst in the door and immediately his good feeling vanished. Minho was at the kitchen table, stony-faced, and Newt was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened?” Thomas asked, looking around. “Where’s Newt?”

“Safe room,” Minho answered flatly.

His heart rate picked up. “Why? What happened? Is he okay?”

“Probably,” Minho said, not looking up from the papers he was going over. Lists of supplies, blueprints for next year’s expanded Gardens--Thomas didn’t stay to look. He went to the safe room and peeked in the window.

Newt was in there, pacing restlessly, scratching at his temple and muttering to himself. The spot he was scratching had gone red, but he seemed more or less okay. Not hurt, at least. No broken bones, no dislocated shoulders.

Thomas turned back to Minho. “What happened?”

Minho shrugged stiffly. “He was mouthing off,” he said. “Talking like a Crank. I told him if he wanted to act like a Crank I’d treat him like one. He kept doing it, so I did.”

Thomas could have smacked him. “You locked him up for _talking?_ ”

“Don’t talk to me like that.” Minho slammed his hand on the table, turning to face him. “You might be the big Med-Jack, you might know all these fancy holds and tricks to calm him down, but I don’t. Only way I know to deal with it is to lock him up until he calms down himself, so that’s what I did.”

Thomas didn’t want to fight him. Minho was right. It was Thomas’s job to defuse situations before they got bad. Minho’s job was just to be there. So he didn’t argue. He just turned, opened the door, and went in.

Newt whirled to face him, lips drawn back into a snarl. “Get out,” he said.

Thomas didn’t budge, just shut the door behind him. “No.”

Newt growled, sounding more animal than human. “Get _out,_ ” he snarled.

This time Thomas crossed the room to stand in front of Newt. “Make me.”

Newt stared at him, hands clenched into fists. “I will,” he said. “I’ll hit you, I’ll make you bleed and I’ll push you out of this room.”

“Then do it,” Thomas said. “Either you’re Crank enough to hit me or you’re not Crank enough to be in here. So hit me or come outside.”

Newt reared back like he was going to hit Thomas, then turned at the last minute and slammed his hand into the wall. The padding kept him from breaking his fingers, thankfully. But he seemed determined to try, pulled back his fist to slam it into the wall again.

This time Thomas grabbed his wrist, grabbed him around the waist from behind and pulled the blond flush against him. “You’re not going to hit yourself,” he said. “You’re not going to hit the wall. You’re going to hit me, or you’re not going to hit.”

Newt let out another snarl, but there was a hint of a wail in it. “I don’t want to hurt you, Tommy,” he warned.

“Then don’t,” Thomas said. “Count for me instead.”

Newt did wail this time, thudded his head back against Thomas’s shoulder. “No. No counting. Just leave.”

“Count,” Thomas insisted. He took Newt’s hand in both of his own and pulled one finger up. Newt didn’t fight him, though he’d started shaking. “Breathe in.”

“ _No_ ,” Newt said. There was something desperate in it, something almost begging.

Thomas held his hand with its outstretched finger in one hand, rubbed his stomach soothingly with the other. “Breathe in,” he said. “Do it.”

Newt let out his breath and stopped, refusing to inhale.

“Breathe in,” Thomas ordered. “You have to eventually.”

Newt lasted almost a minute before he dragged in a huge breath.

“One,” Thomas said. “Say it. One.”

Newt whimpered.

“One. Say it, Newt.”

“Leave,” Newt begged. “Just leave me alone.”

“No. Say it. Count for me.”

Newt whined. “It _itches,_ Tommy. I need--I need--”

“You need to count,” Thomas insisted. “You need to breathe in and count for me.”

“I need to scratch.” The blond started to lift his free hand to his temple, but Thomas caught it and held it by his side. “I need to hit, I need to yell, Tommy, _please._ ”

“No.” Thomas kissed his temple, the red scratches there. “Count for me. Breathe in.”

“I don’t want to count,” he said. He was shaking, from rage or despair Thomas couldn’t tell.

“Do it anyway,” Thomas said. “I’m not leaving you here, and I’m not leaving until you count for me. Breathe in.”

“Leave.”

“I won’t. Not without you. Breathe in and count.”

“Why won’t you _leave?_ ” Newt demanded. There was more pleading than anger now. “Just leave me alone, I need to--”

“You need to count,” Thomas repeated. “We can do this all night. I’m not going to put you in an arm bar, I’m not going to let you hit, and I’m not going to leave without you. Now breathe in and count.”

Newt swallowed--Thomas could feel it, they were pressed so close together. Reluctantly, the half-Crank took a shuddering breath.

“One,” Thomas pressed him. “Say it.”

“One,” Newt groaned, letting out the air.

Thomas lifted another of the blond’s fingers, kissing the tip. “Breathe in.”

He obeyed.

“Two,” Thomas prompted.

“Two,” he repeated wearily.

It took until seven for the shaking to stop.

“Let me hold you?” Thomas asked. “Turn around for me?”

Newt shook his head sharply.

“Then keep counting,” Thomas said. “Breathe in.”

“Eight,” the blond said. Then, “Let me sleep in here tonight, Tommy, please.”

“No,” Thomas whispered, kissing his neck. “You’re sleeping in the bed, with me and Minho. Breathe in.”

“Nine.”

This time Newt extended his own thumb for the count, and breathed in without being reminded. “Ten.”

Thomas kissed his neck again. “Good. You’re doing so good. Keep going, or will you let me hold you?”

He was quiet a minute. Thomas was about to tell him to breathe in again when Newt whispered, “I don’t deserve that.”

Thomas wrapped both arms around Newt’s middle, holding him close. “Of course you do,” he whispered. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I yelled at Minho,” Newt muttered. “I made him grab me and I fought so it would hurt.”

Thomas frowned. “When?”

“He wouldn’t lock me up,” Newt said. “I made him hurt me. He locked me up then. Said if I was going to hurt myself I wasn’t going to use his hands to do it.”

Thomas sighed, rubbing Newt’s stomach gently. “Keep counting,” he whispered.

Newt dropped his hands to his sides, slumping against Thomas. “Just leave.”

Thomas kissed his temple. “Breathe in,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to.”

“Do it for me.”

Newt took a shaky breath. “Eleven,” he whispered. And without warning he started to cry.

“Shh, shh.” Thomas turned him around, pressing his face to his shoulder, petting his hair. “Minho!” he called. “Need you in here!”

He kept petting, shushing Newt, until Minho opened the door. The Asian frowned at the scene, but without a word slipped in behind Newt, holding both of them.

“I’m sorry,” Newt whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Minho said, pressing his forehead to the base of Newt’s neck. “Don’t be sorry. Just--just don’t do it again.”

Newt shook his head. “I need…” he began.

“Don’t,” Thomas said. “Just let us hold you.”

Newt sighed, but obeyed, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Twelve,” he mumbled.

“You don’t have to keep counting,” Thomas said. “It’s okay. You’re okay. No one’s hurt, see?”

“We’re okay,” Minho repeated, kissing the back of Newt’s neck. “You want to go to bed?”

Newt nodded.


	4. This is how it ends.

Newt woke up the next morning to cold and the smell of pancakes. Both his boyfriends had gotten up before him, and he still ran too cold for the covers to keep him warm by himself. He wriggled over to the edge of the bed and peeked out from under the covers. The fire had gone down overnight. No wonder he was cold.

He curled the blankets around him tighter, eyeing the fireplace warily. There was a stack of firewood by the fire. Could he make it and get the fire going again before he started shivering too badly to move?

“Minho?” he called. “Tommy?”

Minho was the one to come first, and he took one look at Newt’s miserable face and started laughing. “Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry. But dude, there’s a robe and slippers. Just get out of bed.”

Newt shook his head, curling into a tiny ball under the covers. His toes were  _freezing._

 

Minho, still laughing, went up to him and pulled the covers away. Newt yelped, but Minho pulled him out of bed and held him close. “Slippers,” he said. “Get dressed. Thomas is making breakfast.”

Newt didn’t want to move, huddled into Minho instead. Minho kept chuckling as he helped Newt into slippers and a robe. “You’ll have to get dressed before you go out,” he said.

Newt was still too cold and miserable to ask what Minho meant by that.

Thomas was indeed making pancakes. Unlike Minho, he didn’t laugh when he saw Newt. He left the pancakes alone to come over and wrap Newt in a hug and lead him over to the fireplace to sit down and warm up.

“Just a couple more minutes,” he said, kissing Newt’s temple. “I got the batter from Frypan, I don’t know how to make it myself.”

Newt nodded distantly, huddling closer to the fire. Minho laughed again but took Newt’s hands and started rubbing warmth back into them.

After the promised few minutes, Thomas announced that breakfast was ready. “Can you come to the table?” he asked Newt.

Newt debated that. Could he eat in front of the fire?

“There’s hot chocolate too,” Thomas said, “to warm you up. Come on.”

Reluctantly, Newt got to his feet and followed his boyfriends to the table. Thomas fetched a blanket from the living room and wrapped it around him.

“You need to eat extra today,” he said, running his fingers down Newt’s arm. “You’re losing weight again.”

“No, I’m not,” Newt mumbled.

“Well, you’re not gaining,” Minho said, “and you’re still too skinny.”

Newt sighed. This had never been a problem in the Glade. In the Glade, it hadn’t mattered how skinny he was, because the weather was perfect. Minho had made him eat more sometimes, and when he was bedridden after his jump the Med-Jacks had all but forced food into his throat to help him heal; but for the most part he’d been left alone. Not anymore.

Thomas put a hand on Newt’s, rubbing gently. “We can take some of it with us,” he said.

This time Newt registered the words. “With us where?” he asked suspiciously.

Thomas glanced at Minho, who shrugged helplessly. “When would I have told him?” he asked.

Panic was starting to creep up Newt’s throat. “Tell me what? Where are we going?”

Thomas turned to him fully, taking his hands. “Don’t freak out, Newt,” he said gently. “Minho has to go to work today, and with Teresa awake I have to go in and help with her physical therapy…”

The panic was choking him. “I can’t,” he said. His vision was starting to blur. “I can’t go out, you saw what happened last time.”

“Newt.” Thomas brushed his hair back from his face. “I can’t leave you here, not after yesterday--”

“The shuck you can’t!” He was yelling, but it was out of terror rather than anger. “Lock me in the safe room and leave me there, I can’t go with you, I’ll attack someone, I can’t…”

“Newt.” Thomas wrapped his arms around him, pressed Newt’s face to his shoulder. “Breathe. Breathe in and count for me.”

“I don’t need to count!” he yelled. “I’m not Cranking out, I just need to stay here!”

“Count,” Thomas said sternly. “If you need to stay here you need to count. If you don’t need to count you don’t need to stay here.”

Newt shook his head, tears leaking out from between his eyelids. “I can’t go out,” he whispered.

“Then count for me,” Thomas repeated, one hand petting his hair. “Breathe in and count.”

Another hand landed on his back and started rubbing gently. Minho. “You’ll be fine, shank,” he said. “Just Thomas and the Med-Jacks and our favorite traitor. If you avoid killing her you’ll be fine.”

He gave a choking laugh, but put that way it actually seemed more manageable. Just a few people, most of whom knew to treat him with kid gloves.

“There you go,” Thomas whispered, kissing the top of his head. “Can you finish eating for me?”

Newt nodded, and Thomas helped him sit up again.

~

The hospital smelled just like his old cell had when he was first brought in. He shuddered, carefully steering his mind away from the memory. If there was one thing that would bring on an attack of the Flare, it was bringing his mind back to how he’d been when it was at full strength.

“Here,” Thomas said, sitting him down on one of the beds. “You can wander, talk to Teresa if you want. Just try to relax. I’ll bring you something to do.”

Newt didn’t know what Thomas meant by that, if there was a book or something he could read, but he didn’t think too much about it. Thomas headed off to get whatever he was planning to bring him, and Newt lay back to relax and wait for him to get back. He ignored the faint pounding his heart. He’d be okay. Thomas would protect him. Thomas would keep him human.

Thomas returned a few minutes later with a notebook and pen, handing them over. “Sorry,” he said. “I was hoping I could find a book or something. This was as close as I could get.”

Newt nodded, taking the notebook. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Maybe he should teach Thomas chess, he thought as he opened the notebook and propped it on his knees. The paper was unlined and thicker than normal--not a notebook like he’d thought, but a sketchbook. Not that he couldn’t write in it anyway, he just had no idea what to write, or draw for that matter.

Thomas was talking softly with Teresa while he helped her move her arms back and forth and above her head. She was holding a tiny rubber ball, probably a weight to help her rebuild all the strength she’d lost in the coma. Newt stared, unreasonably jealous. They weren’t a couple. He belonged to Thomas, not Teresa. Thomas was his. Still, the smile on her face as she looked at Thomas taking care of her made his blood boil.

He dragged his eyes back to the sketchbook. Quickly, harshly, he drew a person who didn’t look at all like Teresa with their head smashed in by a rock. The drawing made him feel better, and then it made him feel guilty that he felt better. What if Thomas saw it? Teresa was his friend.

He ripped the drawing out of the sketchbook and tore it into tiny pieces, throwing them in the trash can by the bed. A few ragged bits of paper still clung to the spiral binding, but at least Thomas wouldn’t see what Newt had done.

Finally Thomas’s part of Teresa’s therapy seemed to end and he went to check on another patient. Newt followed him with his eyes, then without a word got up and went to sit in the chair by Teresa.

“I hate you,” he said shortly.

Teresa looked at him, a faint scowl crossing her face. “Yeah, I noticed that back in WICKED.”

Absurdly, that made him feel guilty. “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “I hate everyone.”

At that her features softened. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he snapped, harsher than he meant it to be. He struggled to reel himself in. “I’m--” He stopped. He wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t fathom being sorry for being honest about what had happened to him. “Just leave it,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “I shouldn’t have come over here. Forget I said anything.”

“Wait,” Teresa said, grabbing his hand. “Just--let’s start over. Just sit down and talk to me. No one’s just talked to me since i woke up, they’re all checking how I am and filling me in on what I missed.”

Newt sat down warily. “What do you think I’ll talk about, then?” he asked.

“How you’re doing,” Teresa said softly. “How he’s doing.” She nodded to Thomas, who was busy with something or other. “I meant to thank you--for keeping him happy.”

Newt stared at her. “I think you hit your head harder than they said,” he said blankly. “I haven’t kept anyone happy. I can’t even keep _myself_ happy. And what do you care anyway?”

“I care,” Teresa said. “He and I were like siblings before the Swipe. Even if he never remembers, I still care about him. And he _is_ happy. Because of you and Minho. So thank you.”

He stared a while longer. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m pretty sure you just hit your head.” He got to his feet, turning away as the door to the hospital opened. A mother and child came in, the child with one arm cradled to its chest. The mother glanced at Newt and pushed her child--Newt couldn’t tell at this distance if it was a boy or girl--behind her.

Newt looked away, back at the bed--his bed, three down from Teresa’s. He made his way there, forcing himself not to shake or scratch. The Flare was there, begging to show the mother the real reason she should hide from him, creeping around the edges of his sanity to try to find a gap.

Thomas came over to check on the mother and child, and Newt managed to sit down in the bed instead of breaking something. Without thinking he grabbed the sketchbook and started drawing.

He filled page after page with drawings of horrible things happening to the mother and child, or to the child while the mother watched. He left the perpetrator faceless, but he wasn’t deluding himself--they were all the things he wanted to do. He knew he was giving the Flare too much power, he knew he should stop, but he was so _angry_. Talking to Teresa hadn’t helped. The woman hadn’t helped. And it sure as hell didn’t help that Thomas had taken care of the child like absolutely nothing was wrong.

He lost track of time, focused on getting his anger onto the page before he did something he’d regret. His first clue that he was out of it was someone talking beside him.

“Whatcha drawing?”

Newt almost fell off the bed before he realized it was the child who was talking. He glared at him (it was a him, as it turned out). He hurried to rip out his latest drawing and crumple it into a ball. “Nothing,” he lied.

The kid’s wrist was wrapped in an athletic bandage and was holding a baggie of ice to it, but he looked overall pretty healthy. Must’ve been better than it had looked when the kid was cradling it to his chest.

“Looked cool,” he said, reaching for the ball of paper in Newt’s hand. “Can I see?”

He snapped. Drawing the things hadn’t been enough. He wanted to hear the boy scream.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he shoved the boy in the chest, hard. The kid fell, yelling when he put his injured hand to the ground by mistake.

“Newt!” Thomas yelled, but Newt didn’t hear him. He tumbled out of bed, straddling the child.

“You want to see it?” he hissed. “It looked something like _this._ ”

He reared a fist back to slam into the boy, but someone grabbed his wrist. “Newt!” Thomas yelled again. “Get up.”

He was going to object, but Thomas twisted his arm until his elbow was to the ground, then pressed on it hard. Newt yelled, but it did the job. He moved where Thomas guided him, stood up while the mother bundled her child away from the Crank.

“Newt,” Thomas hissed, twisting him around to face him. “Newt, look at me. Look at me.”

Newt was still trying to twist, to look at the child. Thomas grabbed his head and pressed it to his shoulder.

“Breathe,” he whispered in Newt’s ear. “Breathe. Count for me. You have to count, okay? I need you to.”

Newt shook his head, struggling to free himself, but Thomas stepped back, dragging him off balance. Newt’s knees gave out and both of them sank to the ground.

“Jeff!” Thomas yelled. “There’s a syringe in my bag. Bring it to me.”

Newt jerked against the hold on his head, but Thomas held firm.

“Newt,” Thomas whispered. “Jeff is bringing a sedative. I don’t want to give it to you, but if you don’t count I will and I’ll let you sleep it off until we go home.”

The red haze that colored the edges of Newt’s vision turned abruptly black and he gasped for air. “No--no,” he whispered. “No, you can’t. It doesn’t--it doesn’t help, I wake up worse, you can’t.” He hadn’t been sedated since coming home, but he remembered the feeling. It was like ants were under his skin when he woke up, and the haze of the Flare only colored more of his thoughts.

Thomas kissed the top of his head. “I don’t want to. Count for me.”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Thomas kissed him again. “Breathe in.”

Almost automatically, Newt sucked in a breath.

“Count,” Thomas whispered. “One. Say it for me.”

“One,” Newt whispered.

Thomas tugged him closer, until Newt was almost in his lap. “Breathe in again.”

He did. “Two,” he whispered. The haze was starting to recede already.

“Thomas?” Jeff asked, and Newt’s heart rate skyrocketed. _No, no, no…_

“Give us a minute,” Thomas said. “Breathe in,” he told Newt. “Three.”

“Three,” he repeated obediently, fingers tangling in Thomas’s shirt. He couldn’t be sedated. He couldn’t handle that.

“Breathe in,” Thomas whispered.

He coached him through ten, then carefully got to his feet, bringing Newt with him. Newt clung to him, let Thomas guide him over to the bed and sit him down again. He looked up at Thomas, eyes wide and terrified. “Don’t sedate me,” he whispered. “Please.”

Thomas kissed his forehead. “I won’t,” he promised. “I don’t have to. You did so good. It’s okay, no one got hurt. Let me finish up here and we’ll go home early, okay?”

Newt nodded, lying back on the bed to wait. It would be okay. Everything would be okay now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I sort of promised Newt a happy ending to this series. Not a hopeful ending like Don't or Ribs, either. A real happy ending. A happily-ever-after kind of ending. So you can all look forward to that... at the end of part three.


	5. I've been sitting here for ages, ripping out the pages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand we're back!

“That’s three attacks in a week.”

Minho said the words flatly, without any emotion behind them. Three attacks in a week. It was three too many.

Thomas nodded, staring at the tea he’d brewed. Minho was pretty sure he’d only brewed it to have something to do with his hands, because now that it was ready he hadn’t touched it. In fairness, Minho hadn’t touched the cup Thomas had made him either.

“He’s doing okay,” Thomas said helplessly. “When he has an attack he’s working to calm down.”

“Only once you remind him,” Minho said. “What did you say he was doing to ‘handle’ it last time?”

Thomas sighed. “Drawing the kid and mom dying over and over. Usually with him killing them.”

“And did you even find out what set him off in the first place?”

Thomas shook his head.

“That’s not okay,” Minho said. “He’s not doing okay. What happens when he goes off on someone and you’re not there? What happens when I’m the only one around?”

“I can teach you…” Thomas began.

Minho shook his head sharply. “That’s not the point. We’re not always there. You were across the room when this happened and it was almost too far. What happens if you're in another room next time?”

Thomas looked down at his tea and didn't answer. Minho took that as answer enough.

“We can't keep up this holding pattern, “ he said. “ _He_ can't keep up this holding pattern. He'll snap and try to kill himself again.”

“He wouldn't,” Thomas said weakly, but he didn't sound at all convinced.

“He would,” Minho said. He held up three fingers. “Three times, Thomas. Once by jumping. Once by asking you to do it. Once by starving himself. If he doesn't get better, he'll try again.”

Thomas frowned, fiddling with his mug, twisting it back and forth. “It's--Kramer said this was all they could do,” he said at last. “The brain doesn't heal itself. It doesn't regenerate.”

“Dietrich fixed his brain before,” Minho said shortly. “He can fix it again. Fix another piece, and another, until he's our Newt again.”

“It's experimental,” Thomas objected. “They might--”

“Shuck ‘might,’ Minho growled. “Shuck ‘can't,’ too. We're going to talk to them and they're going to give us some good news or I'm going to wring their necks.”

Thomas didn't answer. That was fine. Minho would go alone if he had to.

~

Dietrich was in the lab where they'd treated Newt, going through something on the computer. He didn't look up when Minho entered.

“Sarah,” he said, “I need--”

“I'm not Sarah,” Minho said. “I need to talk to you.”

Dietrich looked up at him, frowning. Minho had never been alone with the man before. He had a mousy look about him, especially with his glasses shoved up on top of his head and his thinning hair disheveled.

“Mr. Park,” he said. “Dr. Kramer isn't here. She should be back in a few minutes if you want to take a seat…”

“Actually,” Minho said, “I wanted to talk to you. I want to know what it would take for you to do your brain repair trick again.”

Dietrich frowned. It seemed to take him a minute to figure out what Minho was talking about. Then his eyes lit up. “You're referring to the nanosurgery I performed over the summer, “ he said. “To repair the atrophied impulse control center of Mr. Newton's brain.”

“Yeah, that,” Minho said. “Do it again. Fix something useful.”

Dietrich’s frown deeped and he was opening his mouth, probably to say no, when the door behind them opened and Kramer walked in.

“Sarah!” Dietrich said in relief. Minho blinked. He’d never learned Kramer’s first name. “Mr. Park here was just asking about--”

“I want you to fix Newt’s brain,” Minho said. “Whatever you did to the impulse control part, I want you to do it again, and I want you to do it to something useful.”

Kramer frowned, looking between them. “Dimitri, did you not explain the situation?”

“I was going to,” Dietrich protested, slipping his glasses down over his eyes again. “You interrupted. I thought you’d be better at it.”

The man looked like he wanted to disappear into his studies again. Kramer sighed, tapping one finger on the tablet in her hands.

“We were able to repair the impulse control portion of Mr. Newton’s brain without any considerable risk,” she said, “because it was already dead. The remaining infected portions of his brain are still operational, just--corrupted. Repairing them could risk damaging the function they still retain.”

Minho held up a hand. “Skip the part about risk. What’s the most damaged part of Newt’s brain right now?”

“Right now?” Kramer asked. She looked at Dietrich. “That would be the emotional center. Followed by portions of the brain responsible for sensation--he’s displayed symptoms similar to fibromyalgia, a disease that causes random pain signals to be sent to the brain, but his originate in the brain, creating an itching sensation--”

Minho interrupted again. “Could you fix those two?”

Kramer frowned. “In theory, yes. However, we could inadvertently remove important emotional capacities, or cause the itch signals to become pain signals--”

“Which you could fix again,” Minho said. “Right? Because there’s no deadline on this. You’re building pieces of his brain from Swipe data, which isn’t going bad. You can do it again if you have to.”

Kramer sighed. “In theory, yes,” she said again. “But you’re talking about a process of trial and error and multiple surgeries--”

“Only if it goes wrong the first time,” Minho said. “I’m going to talk to Newt, but I know what he’ll say. He doesn’t like living like this any more than we like seeing it. He’ll say yes, and you guys will just have to figure out a way to reduce the risk.”

“Mr. Park--” Kramer began.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Minho snapped. “Do it before he tries to kill himself again.”

He stormed out, brushing past Kramer, not looking back. Just as the doors were closing he heard Dietrich say, “I _could_ do it, you know.”

~

The door to the safe room was open.

Minho frowned, closing the front door behind him and crossing to the door. The room was empty, the sheets on the cot messy and half-ripped off like Newt had…

“Newt?” he called. “Thomas?”

“In here,” Thomas called.

Bedroom. Minho let out a sigh of relief. Nothing was wrong, they were just in the bedroom. He went to the door and found Thomas curled around a sleeping Newt. The brunet beckoned him over and Minho crossed the room and lay down beside them, draping an arm over both of them.

“What’s up with the safe room?” he asked.

Thomas flushed. “I, um. I put him in there while I went to get our meals for the day. I--he said he was going to take a nap so I waited until he fell asleep and then left. And when I got back I found him thrashing around in his sleep.” He lifted his head so Minho could see a bruise on the right side of his jaw. “He clipped me before he woke up,” he said. “I got him in here, got him to go back to sleep just a few minutes ago.”

As if on cue, Newt started shifting in his sleep, face creasing. His hands clenched into fists and his jaw clenched so hard Minho could see his neck muscles stand out.

“Hey,” Minho murmured, brushing Newt’s hair back from his face. “Wake up, Newt.”

Thomas caught Newt’s hands, holding them safely away from doing any damage.

It took a few minutes, but Newt came awake, gasping for air.

“Hey,” Minho said again, kissing his cheek. “You okay?”

Newt shook his head jerkily, biting his lips together.

“Yes, you are,” Thomas said, slipping his arms around the blond’s waist. “Come on, let’s show Minho how you count for me, so he can help you if I’m not here, okay? Count for me, come on, breathe in.”

Newt glanced at Minho, then looked back at Thomas and took a breath.

“One,” Thomas urged, petting his hair gently.

“One,” Newt said.

“This works?” Minho asked doubtfully.

“Has every time so far,” Thomas said, still focused on Newt. “Breathe in, baby, come on.”

Minho couldn’t believe this could work, but by five Newt’s fists had uncurled, and by ten he seemed almost asleep again.

“Usually doesn’t take more than ten,” Thomas said, brushing Newt’s hair back from his face, still watching the blond. “Twelve, maybe. How you feeling now, baby?”

“Better,” Newt mumbled, but he wasn’t meeting Thomas’s eyes.

“I got a better idea,” Minho said. “Something more permanent. How’s that sound?”

Newt frowned, looking over his shoulder. “Permanent how?”

Minho kissed him, a real kiss. “I talked to Dietrich and Kramer. Dietrich thinks he can rebuild the emotional control part of your brain. That and the sensation part are the most damaged parts right now.”

Newt’s eyes went wide. “They could cure me?”

“It’d be experimental and dangerous,” Thomas said, glaring at Minho. “They did what they could.”

“You can’t tell me you’re not willing to take the risk,” Minho said, looking at Newt instead of Thomas. “I know you. You hate living like this.”

“Don’t pressure him--” Thomas began.

“I can make my own choices,” Newt broke in. “And I say yes. I’ll do it.”

Thomas pulled Newt closer to him. “Baby, I don’t think it’s a good idea…”

“I’m not a baby,” Newt said, turning to Thomas. “Tommy, I can’t. You read my note. I can’t be a Crank, I can’t live like that. It’s worth the risk to me.”

“It won’t be right away,” Minho said, pressing closer to Newt, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Dietrich’s gotta run tests and stuff, make sure he can do it and fix it if it goes wrong. We have time to discuss it.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Newt said. “I’m doing it.”

Thomas didn’t look happy.

Minho sighed, looking at him. “This is a holding pattern,” he said. “This, right now, it’s just maintaining. You can’t get better if you just maintain.”

“You don’t get worse either,” Thomas said.

“We have time,” Minho repeated. “We won’t go until we’re sure.”

“I’m sure _now_ ,” Newt said.

Minho kissed him again. “Until we’re sure he can do it,” he amended. He looked at Thomas. “Okay?”

Thomas still didn’t look happy, but he nodded.


	6. The kids aren't alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This almost didn't get written. I've been super stressed due to finals and almost gave up on getting this up, but I did it. At the last minute, but I did it. You're welcome.

It had been two weeks. Two weeks of Dietrich testing Minho’s proposal on every animal he could get his hands on. So far, it was promising.

The scientists had a few Swipes to install in the animals’ brains, but for the damage they’d needed to repair, Dietrich had gotten creative. For things they couldn’t eat, he’d infected them with rabies, which he said was the closest match to the Flare that infected animals besides humans. For things they could eat, he took the efficient approach of simply removing the part of the brain he wanted to repair, then reprinting it and installing it with the nanobots. So far, every animal had made a full recovery--right before they were slaughtered for meat or Dietrich put them down once they'd served their purpose.

Minho was hopeful, Newt could tell by looking. But Thomas was still dragging his feet.

“Will you do something for me?” he asked Newt on the sixteenth day since Minho had made his proposal.

Newt shrugged, staring at his untouched oatmeal and apple. “Depends what it is.”

Thomas perched on the table beside him, carding a hand through Newt’s hair. “Look at me?”

Reluctantly, he obeyed.

“I’m going to go check on Teresa,” Thomas said. “Will you stay here and take care of yourself? Count if you need to, come get me if you need me? Will you try to be okay without me?”

Newt got what he wasn’t saying. Would he _cope_ without Thomas. Would he be _good_ without Thomas.

“Go,” he said tonelessly. “I’ll be fine.”

Thomas smiled and leaned forward to kiss him gently. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

One hour. The length of time Thomas was willing to leave Newt alone.

Thomas left, and Newt sat, staring at the apple.

_ Count for me? _

_Let’s show Minho how you count for me._

“One,” he muttered.

He lifted a hand and scratched at his temple. It was there, the itch of the Flare, just under the surface of his skin.

No one understood. No one understood what it was like in his head. The Flare didn’t make him angry. The Flare made _everything else_ make him angry. It was like it stripped away the top three layers of skin, leaving him raw and vulnerable and ready to blow up if anyone so much as touched him.

He bit his lips together and scratched harder.

That was something else no one really understood. Dietrich and Kramer knew, but Thomas and Minho didn’t get it. The Flare operated in the brain. _Entirely_ in the brain. The Flare hadn’t made his hair fall out or left a rash over his skin. He’d torn out his own hair, scratched his own skin raw. And he was doing it again.

“One,” he hissed, tangling his fingers in his hair. “One, one, _one,_ why isn’t it working?”

Deep breaths. In, out. Count them.

_ Count for me. _

He wasn’t an _infant._ Counting was something infants were taught to do. Toddlers, maybe. He was--he was an adult, in Glade terms. He didn’t actually know how old he was. Suddenly, that was just another thing itching at him.

“One,” he whispered, but he wasn’t really counting anymore.

Breakfast was still staring at him, oatmeal turned cold and congealed, apple slices fully brown.

He seized the bowl and hurled it at the wall.

The metal clashed into the wood, oatmeal flying in all directions, leaving a dent in the wall.

Newt stared at it, breathing heavily. Somehow he’d ended up on his feet, though he had no idea how. He dragged his hands through his hair, breathing in deep.

“One,” he whispered again.

Suddenly, he felt better. Just a little, but better.

_ Be good. _

_Count for me._

_Let’s show Minho how you count for me._

His lips curled into an expression halfway between a snarl and a smile. He grabbed the plate with the apple slices on it and hurled that the way of the bowl.

“Two.”

Thomas wanted him to cope. Thomas wanted him to _stay_ like this.

Maybe Thomas needed to see exactly what _this_ was like.

He picked up the cup of cold coffee, the only breakable thing in the room, and smashed it into the wall as well.

“Three.”

Over the hour that Thomas was gone, Newt destroyed everything in the house that he could. He smashed windows. He slashed pillows. He counted every item he broke, counted just like Thomas wanted him to. Breathe. Count. Slash. Throw. Kick. Break. Breathe. Count. By the time Thomas returned, the only thing Newt hadn’t destroyed was his cell.

“Newt!” Thomas yelled.

Newt looked up from the knife he was using to carve chunks out of the table. “Fifty-three,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “Has it been an hour already?”

Thomas looked stricken. “Newt, what happened? I told you to come get me if you needed me.”

“You told me to cope,” Newt said, tossing the knife down on the table. “I’m coping.”

“That’s not--” Thomas took a few steps forward, glancing at the knife like he was worried Newt would pick it up again. “Newt, please. Just come here.”

“Come _here,”_ Newt retorted.

Thomas obeyed, walking forward until he could take Newt’s hands in his. “Newt,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you come get me?”

Newt stared at him, fighting back the anger growing in him again. “You didn’t want me there,” he said. “You don’t want to see me. You don’t want me to be right, or Minho. You don’t want curing me to be the only option.”

Thomas pressed his lips together and brushed Newt’s hair back from his face. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “You should’ve come and got me.”

“I’m a Crank, Tommy,” Newt snapped. “I’m always going to be a Crank. That’s the choice _you_ made.”

Thomas actually flinched. “Newt,” he said. “I need you to calm down. I need you to count.”

“No!” He yelled the word, and he didn’t quiet down. “No more counting. Not anymore, not ever again! I’m done coping. You can drug me or you can cure me, but you can’t keep making me count and expect everything to be fine!”

Thomas’s eyes were wide and miserable. “Just--just come to the safe room,” he said. “Please.”

Safe room. Cell. Locked up. At least Thomas would have admitted he couldn’t be trusted. He nodded, let Thomas lead him back to the safe room. Thomas closed the door--but stayed.

Newt tensed. He hadn’t won. Thomas was just going to make him count, was going to hold him down until he broke or did what he wanted.

“Hit me,” Thomas ordered.

Newt blinked. “What?”

Thomas folded his arms over his chest. “Either you’re Crank enough to hit me, or you’re Newt enough to admit that you _chose_ to do all that. So hit me.”

Newt’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. Hit him. Hit him, and Thomas would have to admit he needed to be cured. Hit him, and all the anger would go away.

He couldn’t do it. Thomas standing there, Thomas _asking_ him to hit him, and he couldn’t do it.

“Then sit down,” Thomas said. “Sit on the bed and let me hold you.”

“No,” Newt said, but there was no fight in it.

“Fine. I won’t hold you. Just sit down.”

That, he could do.

Thomas crouched between Newt’s legs, looking up at him, rubbing soft circles on his knees. “Babe, why? Why would you do that?”

What was left of the anger dissolved at the look on Thomas’s face. He swallowed hard. “I wanted--to prove that I need it.”

“The cure?”

He nodded.

“Babe, there are worse things than living like this,” Thomas said. “What if you come out of it and you can’t feel happy anymore? Or what if you can’t feel _anything?_ ”

“They can fix that,” Newt said. “They can fix anything, they have the Swipe data.”

Thomas nodded, but he looked away from Newt’s eyes.

“What?” Newt asked, suddenly wary. “What are you afraid of?”

Thomas looked up. There was something helpless and miserable in his eyes. “You fell in love with me--with us-- _after_ you got the Flare.”

“Oh.”

It was all he could say. He understood now why Thomas was so afraid. He was afraid that once he was cured, Newt wouldn’t love them anymore. He swallowed and reached out, taking Thomas’s hands in his.

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “Maybe--we have them fix the sensation part first.”

“That part mostly works,” Thomas said. “If they’re going to do it…”

“There’s nothing important in there,” Newt said. “Nothing that the Flare affected. If they--if they mess it up, then they can fix it again.”

Thomas swallowed. Then he lifted their joined hands and kissed Newt’s knuckles gently. “I guess,” he said slowly. “I guess we could try that.”

Newt smiled crookedly. “Worst that happens, maybe my leg doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Finally Thomas laughed.

“Come on,” he said, getting to his feet. “We’ve got a lot to clean up before Minho gets home.”


	7. You never know the drop til you get too low.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this would go up yesterday, but I went to a friend's funeral and then brought another friend over to play games and mutually distract ourselves from grief. So I forgot. Anyway, it's up now.
> 
> And for those who didn't look at the author's note after I originally posted it, this fic is now completely written, so there should be no more delays in posting it.
> 
> Warning: There's discussion of suicide and eating issues (not eating disorders technically speaking) in this chapter.
> 
> Okay, now read on.

“Sensation,” Minho said disgustedly.

Thomas didn’t say anything.

“We could’ve had him  _ cured, _ ” Minho said. “All the anger, just gone. And instead you talked him into--”

“I didn’t  _ talk _ him into anything!” Thomas snapped back. “It was his idea. My idea was to just wait it out and keep coping. This was Newt’s alternative.”

“Well it’s a hell of a lot better than just coping,” Minho said. “But it shouldn’t have been sensation. They should be fixing the emotional center right now.”

“I  _ know _ ,” Thomas groaned. “You’ve said. Repeatedly. Look, we’ll do that next, if this works.”

“What the hell use is this anyway?” Minho asked, kicking one of the waiting room chairs irritably. “So there’s an itch. So what?”

“That’s what he said the Flare was,” Thomas muttered.

“Huh?”

Thomas sighed. “He told us it was an itch in his brain, remember? He said it was just making him irritable. Maybe--maybe doing this is better. If the itch is gone, maybe the anger will just… leave.”

Minho kicked the chair again, so hard it toppled onto its side. “Yeah, right. I know when you’re trying to convince yourself, Tommy.”

“Don’t call me that,” Thomas said, voice strained. “Newt calls me that.”

“Yeah, so?”

Thomas buried his head in his hands. “So,” he said through his fingers, “if this goes wrong he might never call me it again.”

Silence.

Finally Minho sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around him.

“This is why we need him, you know,” he said. “He gets between us, keeps us sane. Without him we just--butt heads.”

“Yeah,” Thomas muttered.

Neither of them said it, but Thomas could practically hear what Minho was thinking. If the surgery went wrong, they wouldn’t last. They wouldn’t be a couple, they’d be two people missing their glue.

“If this works,” he said, “we’ll do emotions next.” He took a deep breath. “I’m just--scared they’ll set him back to factory settings if they do that.”

Minho frowned. “What do you mean ‘factory settings’?”

“I mean, how he was before the Flare took hold.” Thomas looked up at him, face pale. “Before we all…”

Minho sighed. “Yeah. I get that.”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispered. “It should’ve been emotion.”

“It will be,” Minho said with confidence Thomas knew he didn’t feel. “Next time, that’s what we’ll do.”

Suddenly the air in the waiting room was too stuffy. He got to his feet. “I’m gonna go,” he said. “Newt won’t be out for hours. I’m gonna go to the hospital, check on Teresa.”

“Suit yourself,” Minho said, voice flat.

Thomas wanted to stay. He wanted to hold his boyfriend.

He took a step back. “I’ll be back,” he said helplessly, and fled.

~

Teresa was sitting up against the headboard when Thomas got there. He took one look at her and instantly his brain flipped into Med-Jack mode.

“Hey,” he said, coming up beside her. “What’s wrong?”

Teresa smiled, but the corners looked too thin and sharp. “Nothing,” she announced. “Nothing in the world is wrong.”

She was lying. More than that, he knew exactly what his nose was telling him now that he was so close.

“It’s infected?” he asked, horrified.

“Yep,” Marie said from behind him. Thomas turned and found her approaching with an armload of supplies. “You can help me rebandage it,” she told him. Obediently, Thomas grabbed the biohazard trash bag and held it open.

“You haven’t been in in a while,” Teresa said as Marie peeled away the bandages. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten me.”

“Newt needed me,” he said evasively, letting Marie drop the dirty bandages into the bag. “How’d this get infected?”

“Reusing gloves, maybe,” Marie said. “We’re using disposable ones until we’re sure it’s all healed up. Even cleaning them with bleach doesn’t seem to be doing the job.”

Thomas looked very hard at Teresa’s face while Marie cleaned up the wound. It looked a lot better than it had when he’d first come in, but he didn’t want to see how it looked infected.

Teresa, of course, noticed. “That bad, huh?” she asked with a teasing smile. “So bad the fearless Med-Jack won’t look?”

“I’m not fearless,” he said with a pathetic attempt at a smile. “Just a Med-Jack, and still a trainee at that.”

Teresa’s answering smile was much stronger. “I can see that.” Then she sobered. “How’s Newt doing?”

“He’s in surgery,” Thomas said automatically, then added, “They’re trying to fix part of his brain.”

Teresa’s eyes widened, then she smiled. “I  _ told _ you,” she said triumphantly.

“Told me what?”

“That they could cure him.” She frowned. “Didn’t I?”

He shook his head.

She shrugged. “Must be the head trauma. Anyway, I knew they would.”

“We don’t know yet that they’ve managed it,” he said. “He’s still in surgery.”

The door opened, and Thomas turned to find Minho in the doorway.

“Or maybe not,” Thomas said. He set down the bag and went to his boyfriend. “What happened?”

Minho didn’t even look at Teresa or Marie. “He woke up,” he said. “In surgery. They put him back under, said it’s normal, but--” He stopped, and took a breath, and reached out and took Thomas’s hands. “Come back,” he whispered. “Come back with me. I can’t--wait there alone.”

Thomas’s heart twisted. He looked back at Teresa, then at Minho. He had no idea how to help Teresa. But he could at least be there for Minho.

“Okay.”

~

Thomas couldn’t go back to the waiting room. Minho got that. And they couldn’t go home, not with Newt missing and the cell and bed and still-existing nest in the living room all achingly empty.

So he dragged Thomas somewhere else, somewhere neither of them would be reminded. All the way down to the beach.

“There are nets,” he said. “Off that reef there. We’re going to check them.”

Thomas didn’t say anything, but Minho heard in the silence that he understood. They were doing something with themselves besides wait for news.

Minho untied the boat the way their head fisherman had shown him. Gary had been a professional fisherman before the sun flares had destroyed his California town and forced him into the mountains with his fellow survivors. Now he’d taken over the job and ran the fishermen, one of the only non-subjects to run a group.

“Come on, in,” he said, putting a hand on Thomas’s back to help him into the boat. “They know where to find us.” ‘They’ being the doctors. Minho had told them to come get them if the surgery finished before the two got back.

Thomas looked nervous, but this was Minho’s show now. He climbed into the boat and started rowing.

“He never ate,” he told Thomas as he pushed off. “About three months before you showed up he tried to starve himself to death.”

Thomas blinked. “He did?”

“Yeah.” Minho focused on the rowing for a minute. Then, without meaning to, he started talking again.

“You can’t force-feed him when he does starve himself, because he has a damn panic attack if you try. The docs gave him a nutrient IV when he tried this time--Alby and I had to double-team him and guilt him into eating last time, which almost backfired because he threw up most of what he ate.”

Thomas was listening intently, or at least he looked like he was. For once he was being quiet, so Minho went on.

“He told me back then it was easier to stop eating than it was to eat, because he never got hungry and meat made him want to puke. It’s the texture--he said it still felt like muscle. I asked how he knew what muscle felt like and he said he didn’t know but it felt like it.”

“What about ground meat?” Thomas asked.

Minho nodded. “Tried that. It was a little better. So Frypan started making big batches of burgers, or spaghetti and meatballs, and saving those to give him. He didn’t eat much else, unless it was vegetarian.”

“So…” Thomas frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” Minho said, stopping and grabbing the rope hanging from the reef, “fish doesn’t taste like muscle.” He turned in his seat and started pulling the rope. “Or feel like it, whatever.”

Thomas got it. “You mean, he can eat this.”

Minho nodded. “If I know him, he’ll be touchy after the surgery. Won’t want to eat anything hard. So we’re going to bring as much of this back as we can and make that for him.”

Thomas blinked. “We’re going to cook?”

“Sure,” Minho said, tugging. The top of the net crested the hull of the boat. “Gimme some help with this, will you?”

Thomas nodded, getting to his feet and starting to pull. Together they got the net into the boat. It was full of fish, flopping as they started to suffocate.

“All for a good cause,” Minho muttered, emptying the net and tossing it back into the water. “Come on, let’s go back in.”

They’d barely pulled up on shore when Gary appeared, along with two other fishermen. “We need some of that,” Minho told him, but Gary wasn’t looking at the fish.

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “You’ve got company.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and Minho looked past him to find Kramer standing there, hands folded in front of her.

His heart jumped into his throat and he grabbed Thomas’s arm. “Come on,” he said, and all at once they were running, just like back in the Maze, straight for Kramer.

She didn’t even wait for them to reach her before turning and starting to walk. Minho knew what that meant, but he couldn’t help asking. “Is he--”

She didn’t let him finish. “He’s awake.”


	8. Just fall apart if you need to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had family over all weekend and totally forgot to post this until just now. Sorry about that, but here you go.

Bright, bright lights, staring straight into his eyes. He blinked, squinted, tried to make his brain focus.

“Just relax,” said a familiarly mousy voice. “The sedative is still strong, give it a while to wear off.”

He ignored the advice and force his head to tilt toward the voice, squinted at the figure until it came into focus.

“Dietrich,” he said. Or at least, that’s what he tried to say. What actually came out was “Dee-drr.”

“Mr. Newton,” Dietrich replied. “Your--Mr. Park and Mr. Edison should be here soon. Sarah--Dr. Kramer went to get them.”

Get them? They left him? If he’d been more in control of his faculties he would have whined or cried. Thankfully, that was still too much effort.

He waited a torturous few minutes while the sedative wore off and Dr. Dietrich fussed with his IV. If he were thinking clearly, he’d have thought the man was as nervous as he was, but he was still not thinking clearly.

The door opened after a few more minutes, and Dietrich pressed a button that lifted Newt’s hospital bed so he could see who it was. There was Kramer, and there were Minho and Thomas. He couldn’t seem to move his arms, but he could smile, and he did.

“God,” Thomas whispered, crossing the room and pulling him into his arms and burying his face in his neck. “I was so scared.”

Minho was next, turning Newt’s head so he could kiss him.

Clarity was starting to come to his thoughts again. Something was odd, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“Tommy,” he whispered. “Min. How long…?”

“A couple hours,” Minho said. “I’m sorry--we went to get fish, I couldn’t--I’m sorry.”

They  _ had _ left him. Newt swallowed. But they’d come back. They were here now. That made up for it, right?

“I’m so sorry we left, baby,” Thomas whispered, kissing his head. “I’m so sorry I left.”

_ Baby. _ He waited for the flare of anger that always showed up when Thomas called him that.

It came--just a spark--and then fizzled away.

He sucked in a breath. The name didn’t  _ itch. _ It didn’t stay under his skin like a splinter. He wasn’t angry at Thomas for using it. For once he could just enjoy being the one nicknamed instead of the one doing the nicknaming.

“Call me that again,” he whispered, and it came out mostly intelligible.

“What?” Thomas asked. “Baby?”

He nodded. “Again.”

“Baby.” Thomas kissed his lips gently. “Baby, we were so scared, I’m sorry we left, baby.”

The name washed over him like a warm wave of the ocean. The anger sparked over and over, but never caught, like a lighter without any fuel.

_ That _ was what was off about his thoughts, about his body. He didn’t itch. The blankets on his skin weren’t too rough or too heavy; the bandage around his head didn’t demand to be scratched away; the warm arms around him didn’t make him feel trapped. After almost a year of being too sensitive to the irritation of  _ everything, _ he felt almost numb. Blissfully, brilliantly numb.

He started to laugh, childlike glee in the sound. He was  _ better. _

“Again,” he laughed. “Say it again.”

Thomas obliged.

Dr. Kramer cleared her throat. “If you’re feeling up to it, Mr. Newton, we do need to run a few tests.”

He looked at her, and at Dietrich. He’d almost forgotten they were in the room. “Right,” he said. “Okay.”

Kramer had him close his eyes while they tested his sensation. Taps to various parts of his body, then soft pinpricks, hard enough to hurt without breaking the skin. It was tedious and it sparked that helpless lighter that used to be the itch in his brain, but Kramer seemed satisfied that nothing had been damaged when they fixed the faulty signals in his brain.

“When can we take him home?” Thomas asked her. He’d let go of Newt for the tests, but he put a hand on his shoulder now. Minho had left his on Newt’s other shoulder while Kramer worked.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to do that now,” she said. “Provided you’re feeling well enough.” That last was directed to Newt, who nodded. He felt  _ amazing. _ He could do anything he wanted like this.

“Finally,” Thomas whispered, kissing Newt. “Let’s go home.”

~

Minho locked the door to the safe room as soon as they reached the house.

Newt frowned. “What’s that about?”

“We’re not using it anymore,” Minho said, turning abck to guide him into his nest in the living room. “You’re cured, or halfway there at any rate. You don’t need to be locked up.”

Newt didn’t like the sound of that, even if the itch was gone. The anger was still there. He’d been fine on the short walk home, but no one had talked to them or looked at them.

“Tell me how you feel?” Thomas asked, leading him over to the table and sitting him down.

He shrugged, putting a hand to his head where the bandage was. There was nothing more than a half-inch incision in his skull that had let the nanites in and out. The wound had been sewn up and already stopped bleeding. It itched, but compared to the constant itch he’d felt for nearly a year, even that itch felt more like numbness.

“I don’t, really.” He rubbed the bandage, frowning. “It’s--it’s not that I’m not angry, it’s just--it doesn’t seem to stick.”  _ Nothing _ seemed to stick right now. Not anger, happiness, worry--nothing. It was like the itch had taken everything with it when it left. Or like it had been the glue that all his emotions stuck to, and without it they slid off him like water off a duck.

Thomas sat beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Minho came up behind him and started rubbing the back of his neck gently. “What  _ do  _ you feel?” Thomas asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Panic welled up in him. What would he do if he was stuck like this forever? “Tommy,” he gasped. “Min, I don’t--”

“Shh.” Thomas took his hands gently. “Breathe. It’s okay, Newt. Count for me.”

“I don’t need to count!” he yelled. “I’m not angry, I’m--”

He stopped. It was like a bubble had popped. “Scared,” he whispered, and the fear drained away. He could feel things. He just had. He laughed, hysterical suddenly.

Minho wrapped his arms around his chest from behind. “Hey, shank,” he said into his hair. “Share with the class.”

“I can feel,” he whispered. “I’m not broken. I can feel things.” He clasped Thomas’s hands tightly. “I love you,” he whispered. He looked up at Minho. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“We love you too, baby,” Thomas whispered, pressing a kiss to his lips.

“Dinner,” Minho announced. “We got fish. Easy on your stomach.”

He smiled helplessly. They were so good to him. And he could be happy about it. He was  _ cured. _

~

Newt woke up the next morning to an empty house.

“Minho?” he called as he wandered the halls, bundled up tight in one of Minho's sweatshirts and Thomas's socks. “Tommy? Where are you?”

He found an answer, of a kind, on the kitchen table.

_ Baby, _

_ I'm going in to work today. Just for the morning. I'll be home for lunch. Oatmeal on the stove for breakfast. _

_ Love, _

_ Tommy _

He swallowed hard. Thomas had left him alone?

Don't worry, he ordered himself. He was cured. He could be left alone for a few hours. He could go out if he wanted to.

Maybe not go out, he amended. But he could be left alone.

Maybe he'd go see Gally. He hadn't seen him, or most of the other Gladers, since reaching paradise.

He eyed the stove, then sighed and poured the oatmeal into a bowl. He topped it with honey and raisins, poured milk over the mess, and sat down at the table to eat.

He watched the window as he ate. It had been one of the few things he hadn't broken when he went on his rampage a few weeks ago. Then, it had been because it offered a comforting barrier between himself and the world and elements he didn’t want to deal with. Now, it just kept the wind off his face.

He finished his oatmeal, dumped his bowl, and went outside. He’d find Gally. Maybe Aris. Talk to people he knew, people who’d known him before he was a Crank, see if they recognized him now.

~

Gally, not surprisingly, was with the builders.

“Stop!” he yelled at a former Glader who now held a hammer in his hand. “We’re screwing this wall together. It’s stronger. Grab a drill.”

“Gally,” Newt said softly.

Somehow, the boy heard over the clamor of voices. He turned and his eyes fell on Newt.

Newt had expected Gally to not want to see him. He hadn’t expected the boy to come over and scoop him into a hug so ferocious he was lifted off the ground, hadn’t expected to be spun around while Gally laughed.

“Can’t breathe!” he yelped.

Gally put him down and actually mussed his hair. “Good to see you, shank,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to come say hi since they moved you into the house. How do you like it?”

“Love the safe room,” Newt said dryly, fixing his hair. “Don’t like the cold.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone, but I might have a solution for you by spring,” Gally said with a wink, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “This is gonna be the house for the old Gladers, once it’s done.  _ And _ it’s gonna have electricity and plumbing.”

“Serious?” Newt asked, looking it over. So far it just looked like a frame of wood beams. “You’re working fast.”

“Well, right now everyone’s in five cabins,” Gally said with a shrug. “Gladers are getting their new house, then Glenners--Group B, that’s what they call themselves--and then the Munie families. You guys aren’t supposed to be high on the list, but I didn’t think you’d want to have to leave the house for much longer.”

“No,” Newt said distantly, watching the crowd of workers. “I don’t.”

Something was wrong. He’d spotted someone who was familiar, but he couldn’t place where he knew her from.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked instead. “You hated me back in the Glade. And we never exactly kissed and made up.”

Gally shrugged. “You didn’t like  _ me _ much after I got stung,” he said. “So I didn’t like you right back. But I don’t mind you, man. You’re one of the smartest guys we have. We’ve always needed you. And with all the memories where they go, not wedged into the middle of a giant shucking blank space… I dunno. It’s easier. I think the Changing was supposed to make us act more like Cranks, let them see the difference between us and the real thing. Anyway, it’s good to see you. How’d surgery go?”

Newt took a violent step back. He knew where he knew the person from. “I have to go,” he whispered through numb lips.

“What?” Gally asked as Newt started backing away. “What’s going on?”

Newt glanced around frantically until he saw--there was a group of children playing under a nearby tree. Children of the builders, he guessed, waiting for Mum and Dad to be done with work for the day. And he knew one of those children, knew them from the same place he knew their mother.

“I have to go,” he whispered again, and ran, before the mother could realize the Crank who’d attacked her child was out and about without a keeper.


	9. I'm here and I won't leave you now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who forgot to update this again? Yep, me obviously.

Gally turned when someone tapped his shoulder, and found himself face-to-face with Maggie. She was one of the best Munie builders they had, and she looked pissed.

“Was that the Crank?” she asked.

Gally frowned. “His name’s Newt,” he said shortly. “He’s a Glader.”

“And he’s not immune,” she said. “He attacked my boy.”

Gally glanced over at where Robbie was playing with the other boys. “I’ve seen Newt fight,” he said. “If he attacked your boy, he’d be in a lot worse shape.”

Maggie folded her arms over her chest. “His keeper, or boyfriend or whoever, had to pull him off Robbie. Explain  _ that _ one.”

Gally didn’t blink. “He just had surgery,” he said. “He’s supposed to be cured now. Let him be.”

Maggie took a step closer. She was a lot shorter than Gally, but that didn’t stop her from looking down her nose at him. “Or what?”

“Don’t make me threaten you, Maggie,” he said quietly. “You won’t like what I come up with. Go back to work.”

~

Without meaning to, Newt ran to the same place in paradise that he would have gone in the Glade. He ran to the cemetery.

He fell to his knees in the tiny clearing in the woods where they’d set up the headstones and markers. So far, none of the markers marked real graves. So far, they hadn’t lost anyone since reaching paradise. The markers were for all the people they’d lost on the way. Half of them were from Groups A and B, never mind that they made up only a tiny fraction of the population of paradise. When Newt’s eyes focused, he realized he was looking at the marker for Ben.

He flinched. Once upon a time one of the other Gladers, Sox, had tried to kill him. No Changing to excuse it. It had been early on, Sox had been a Bagger, and he’d convinced himself they couldn’t punish one of their few Baggers. He’d thought that by killing Newt he’d have more power in the Glade, and be able to say Newt ran into the Maze.

He’d failed. He’d been locked up. And Newt had suggested they banish him.

Sox wasn’t represented in the graveyard. It had been Thomas’s decision that Ben should be represented. As the boy who he’d tried to kill, Thomas had been the one to contend that Ben should be absolved because he was in the Changing. With that, two more names had been added, of other boys who’d gone violent in the Changing.

Newt cast his eyes to the other graves, anything to keep from thinking about his invention of Banishing. But there--there was Alby.

Alby’s possessed suicide attempt still rang in Newt’s mind, right alongside Alby running into the Maze to save him from his own. Nick--there was his marker, just behind Alby’s--had been pissed, had yelled at Alby for setting a bad example, because if the second-in-command could break the rules, what was to stop someone else from doing the same?

There was George, beside Nick. George had been the peacekeeper between Alby’s temper and Nick’s level-headed, even-handed distribution of rules and punishments. But he hadn’t lasted long. George and Gally had been the ones to go into the Maze and find out what was out there. Gally had been stung. George had been taken.

Newt pulled his knees close to his chest, burying his face in them. He didn’t want to think about this. He didn’t want to be here. It was all welling up in him, all the helpless rage and all the painful grief, equal measures of both. But he didn’t know where else to go.

The itch was gone, but this rage was strong enough to reach up and throttle him with or without the Flare. He wanted to lash out, wanted to scream and yell--but there was no one around to lash out at, and no one would hear if he screamed.

Maybe that was a good thing.

He got to his feet and kicked out at Nick’s marker, violently. “How could you be so  _ stupid? _ ” he yelled. Nick had been the one to jump down the Box Hole, the half-shank buried in a glass tomb. “How could you do that to me? How could you?”

He grabbed Alby’s marker and tried to rip it out of the ground, but it was rooted deep and he couldn’t budge it. He kicked that one too, thoroughly satisfied when it rattled.

George. Wyck. Stephen. Winston. He cursed them all, kicked their markers, shrieked to high heaven at them for leaving him. He kept yelling until the anger finally dissolved and left him in tears.

He curled up at the base of a tree facing Alby’s marker, curled into a tiny ball, and let the tears take over.

~

Thomas was worried.

He should have known better than to leave Newt at home alone. He’d come home early to check on him--no Newt.

Minho. Minho would know.

Minho was with the fishermen again, hauling fish onto shore, but he came running as soon as he saw the look on Thomas’s face. “What happened?”

Thomas stammered. “I--I went to work--Newt--he left, I don’t know where he is.”

Minho, for once, didn’t yell. He just sighed. “I bet I do,” he said. “You two had the same hiding place back in the Glade. I doubt he’s changed much.”

Gary yelled at Minho to come help, and Minho turned to go. “Check the graveyard,” he told Thomas hurriedly. “If he’s not there I’ll help you look.”

Graveyard. Deadheads, back in the Glade.

Thomas could have kicked himself. How many times had he gone deep into the Deadheads, until he found the corner of the wall, and fallen asleep there? How many times had Newt found him?  _ Of course _ that was his hiding place too.

“Thanks,” he yelled after Minho’s retreating back, and hurried to track down their boyfriend.

He found Newt asleep at the base of a tree. A couple of the grave markers were crooked, but Thomas didn’t remember if they’d been like that before. He crouched down by Newt, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Newt, baby,” he murmured. “Time to go home.”

Newt frowned in his sleep, mumbling unhappily, then drifted off again.

Thomas smiled. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t wake Newt up, it was too cruel. Instead he wormed his arms under him carefully and picked him up. Even months after his latest suicide attempt, Newt was still light enough for Thomas to lift, although he staggered a little bit when he took his first step. He righted himself and headed for home, the blond curled in his arms.

~

The first thing he noticed when he woke up was the warmth. He’d been cold when he went to sleep.

He mumbled something that might have been a name or might have just been his customary protest against waking up, and opened his eyes to squint at the room. He was in the living room, not in bed, and his nest of pillows and blankets had been moved as close to the fire as was safe. Presumably that was why he wasn’t in the bedroom. The bed was further from the fire than this.

“Tommy?” he called tentatively. “Min?”

Thomas poked his head around the corner. “It’s just me,” he said. “Minho’s still at work.”

Newt looked around. “How’d I get here?”

“I carried you.”

He stared at Thomas. “Serious?”

Thomas grinned sheepishly. “As Minho would say, you’re still too skinny,  _ shank. _ ”

Newt rolled his eyes. “I’m also too cold to get up,” he said. “You might have to carry me again.”

“Why would I carry you?” Thomas asked. “You got somewhere to go?”

Newt shrugged. “No,” he mumbled. “I just want cuddles.”

Thomas laughed. “You don’t need to get up for that,” he said, and picked his way through the cushions to curl up in the nest beside Newt. “I can cuddle you right here.”

Newt snuggled close to Thomas, dragging the blankets tight around them both and putting his cold feet on his boyfriend’s legs to warm them up. Thomas laughed, pulling him close and kissing his head.

“I’m sorry I left,” he said. “I thought you’d be okay.”

“I almost was,” he mumbled. “Then… I saw someone.”

“Someone?” Thomas asked gently.

“Yeah.” He curled closer to Thomas. “You remember,” he bit his lip, stopped, tried again. “You remember when I tried to attack that kid?”

“Yeah,” Thomas whispered. He got it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll go out with you next time. We’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Newt blinked back helpless, furious tears. “I should be okay now,” he whispered.

He considered telling Thomas Gally’s promise, that they’d be in their own house by spring. Instead he curled closer to him. “I’m going back to sleep,” he announced.

There was a smile in Thomas’s voice as he whispered, “Okay.”


	10. Take my hand, hold on forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe this was finished on Google Docs this whole time? And that I just faded from the fandom and forgot to post it? Because that. That's a thing. That happened.

“And have you had any outbursts since the surgery?” Dr. Kramer asked, looking over her tablet.

Newt smiled crookedly. “I attacked a few headstones, does that count?”

Minho squeezed his shoulder. Dr. Kramer returned the smile. “For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider only outbursts that targeted a living person or their valuable possessions.”

“Then no,” he said. “None.”

Dr. Kramer made a note on the tablet, then folded it between her hands. “In that case, I think it’s safe to consider you effectively cured. Come spring, I would say you can pick a job, have a normal life.”

Newt snorted. “You don’t think ‘normal’s’ a little out the window here, Doc?”

“On the contrary,” she said. “I consider ‘normal’ to be a relative term. Given the sample population, a normal life is well within your abilities. The effects of the Flare have been mitigated; it’s not spreading; effectively, you’re as normal and immune as anyone else here.”

It sounded too good to be true, and he felt like he’d lied somehow to get there. He still got angry. Not as often and not as much, but he got angry. He’d punched his own hand into a wall once, just hard enough to hurt. And he’d shouted at Minho and Thomas more than once.

Still, a month without any attacks on anyone else…

Maybe he  _ was _ cured.

Brenda had said something to him, back when he was in the cell. She’d said that as a child, she’d promised herself she’d never hope again.

_ “You look pretty hopeful now,” he’d said. _

_ “Yeah,” she’d answered, and laughed. “When Jorge found me, I kinda broke that promise.” _

He’d tried so hard not to hope anymore, even when they took him home, even when they said they wanted him--didn’t want each other without him in the picture. But now--now he was breaking the same promise.

“Thank you,” he said to Kramer. He looked up at Minho. Thomas was with Teresa again. The infection had died down, and the girl was finally retraining her muscles to walk. “Let’s go home.”

_ Home. _

He was so giddy with relief and that clammy feeling of  _ hope _ that he didn’t notice who was standing outside.

“You tried to kill my boy.”

Minho shoved Newt behind him, and Newt was too startled to protest. He recognized the woman now. He didn’t recognize the people behind her, but he recognized her.

“You tried to kill my  _ boy! _ ” she yelled.

“I didn’t,” Newt protested weakly. “I wasn’t gonna kill him.”

“Newt, shut up,” Minho ordered.

He shut up.

~

This woman, whoever she was, couldn’t have picked a worse time to come up to them with accusations. Minho’s blood was boiling and he was fully ready to punch her lights out, Munie or not.

“He’s  _ cured, _ ” he growled. “Back off.”

“Cured?” The woman barked a laugh. “If you think a Crank can be cured you’re deluding yourself.”

“You want to talk to Kramer?” Minho asked. “They rebuilt his brain, shuck-face. Now back off. I won’t ask again.”

“We’re not asking either,” the woman said. “The Crank comes with us, faces a trial for trying to kill my  _ son. _ ”

“What trial?” Minho asked. “There hasn’t been a single trial since we started. We’re not starting with someone who was  _ sick. _ ”

He was starting to think he’d have to fight them all when he saw someone approaching from the coast. Brenda. He made eye contact with her and jerked his head toward the crowd. She took one look and her shoulders straightened and she marched over.

“Maggie!” she said enthusiastically. “I’ve been looking  _ everywhere _ for you.”

The woman blinked, taken aback. Brenda took advantage of the moment of distraction and grabbed her arm.

“Little Graham is  _ so _ worried about you,” he said. “He said you looked dizzy this morning and you forgot your coffee. He’s been thinking you’re sick, and when he went down to the builders and you weren’t there…”

Minho didn’t hear much more, because Brenda had been leading the woman away while she talked. As soon as her son’s name had come up, Maggie had let her.

The remaining people shifted uneasily, and Minho couldn’t help marveling at Brenda’s skill. And then, because the world had apparently decided to be merciful, the door behind them opened and Kramer and Dietrich emerged.

“Hey,” the man on the right said. “You two. You cured a Crank?”

Minho glanced over his shoulder and found Dietrich. For a mousy little man, he looked tremendously proud of himself.

“Yes,” he said, chest puffed up like he’d returned someone from the dead. Which, strictly speaking, he sort of had. Curing a terminal disease was almost the same, right? He added, “We used nanites to kill off the virus, then 3-D printed the damaged parts of Mr. Newton’s brain…”

“Could you do it again?”

There was a strangled note in the man’s voice. Minho wondered who he’d lost to the Flare.

Kramer stepped in as Dietrich deflated. “The method we used, unfortunately, will only work on subjects like Mr. Newton. We had a full map of how his brain should look that we used to reconstruct what the Flare had damaged. We don’t have that for anyone without the Swipe.”

“So my daughter…” The man trailed off.

Kramer grimaced. “We’ve been in paradise half a year,” she reminded him. “Your daughter is most likely already gone.”

Minho hadn’t known the woman had any capacity for tact, but her phrasing could easily have been interpreted to mean a full-gone Crank rather than dead.

She was also providing an important distraction.

“Come on,” he murmured, putting an arm around Newt’s waist and guiding him home.

The blond was shaking, clinging to him. “You should’ve let them,” he whispered. “You should’ve let them, I could’ve hurt that boy…”

“You were sick,” Minho whispered back. “I might not remember the world outside the Glade, but I’m pretty sure there was some kind of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ thing. And you’re cured now, so it won’t happen again. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”

He guided Newt into the house and shut the door behind them. As soon as the  _ click _ sounded, Newt bolted for the safe room. His shaking hands yanked on the door, but Minho had latched it weeks ago, and Newt’s panicked brain didn’t remember to unlatch it.

“Hey, hey.” Minho caught his hands, pulling them away, pulling the blond close to him. “You’re okay. You’re cured. They didn’t do anything, you didn’t do anything. You’re cured, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”

And quite suddenly Newt was crying.

“Shh, shh,” Minho whispered, petting his hair. “Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Newt sobbed, burying his face in the fabric over Minho’s chest. Minho kept petting him, kept soothing him as well as he could.

“I wish Thomas was here,” he whispered. “It should be him, he’s good at this stuff. I’m not.”

“Don’t,” Newt whispered.

He looked up the few inches into Minho’s eyes. His own were puffy and red, but his voice was steady. “Don’t ever think I love you less. Don’t think--don’t think I could choose between you.”

His voice cracked on the last words, and Minho pulled him into his arms. It had escaped him how much he’d needed to hear that, all the past few months while Thomas took care of Newt, Thomas bandaged him after outbursts, Thomas helped him eat and bathe, Thomas helped him count the attacks away.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you both, so much.”

Newt snuggled into him. “That’s why I stayed,” he said. Then he amended. “That’s why I stay.”


End file.
